


Iron Man in a Universe that Almost Existed

by generalzero



Series: A Universe that Almost Existed [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, BAMF Pepper Potts, Gen, Justin Hammer is a huge nerd, Team Dynamics, Tony Stark is not the only genius in the world, Villains to Heroes, What-If, and has a boner for Jarvis
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-17
Updated: 2017-06-19
Packaged: 2018-04-09 18:09:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4359110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/generalzero/pseuds/generalzero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>…in which Tony Stark prefers to harass his PA instead of attending a weapons demonstration and Obadiah Stane has to go instead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Obadiah Stane

**Author's Note:**

> Various spoilers for Iron Man 1+2, but if you haven't seen those yet you need to get on your shit. Please enjoy and leave comments! Remind me to make a Stan Lee cameo!
> 
> Warning: glossed-over torture, mention of waterboarding, PTSD, swearing, canon-typical violence
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own anything that Marvel came up with first and they can take my money any time they want.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heavily edited 5/20/17

When Howard and Maria Stark die in an unexpected car crash, Obadiah Stane knows it's complete bullshit.

  
Howard Stark would not be caught dead—literally—in a car that was not programmed to avoid collisions and designed to protect its occupants from everything up to and possibly including World War III. However, Oby does not mention this at the time. No need for stocks to take a dip when it's already alarmingly clear that everyone is already under-confident in young Tony’s ability to step up to the plate and handle the company.

  
Oby wished he could say their doubts are unnecessary, but unfortunately, Obys has to bribe the damn kid with pizza and lingerie models to get him to sit still long even enough to sign documents and listen to annual reports. Sure, Tony churns out new tech faster than the whole R&D department combined… but it troubles Oby to see no sign of the enthusiasm and verve that Howard brought to his work. Tony's got no drive to push the envelope; he just keeps making the same old weapons bigger and nastier, pulling juvenile stunts and creating PR nightmares in between inventions.

Oby thinks, for the space of a minute, that his parents death is hitting the young man harder than he lets on. Tony and Howard didn't quite get on well, especially in the last few years, but maybe there's some love lost after all…

An explosive conversation with Tony puts that theory immediately to rest.

“Mysterious you say? Oby, you’re being paranoid. Dad was drunk as hell and Mom was probably high as fuck on her meds—they probably shut off the autopilot for kicks.”

“Tony, I know you and your dad never really—“

“I said leave it alone, okay? God fucking damn, I don’t care.”

After that Oby doesn't try to engage Tony in anything other than professional matters. Not that Tony listens to him much on that subject either. So Oby focuses on stock prices and acquisitions and interest percentages—money is Obadiah's guilty pleasure, and he spends most of his time focusing on interesting ways to spend and make it.

Soon after their falling out, Tony’s conveyor belt of personal assistants—which he hires, beds and then fires—is abruptly halted by Pepper Potts, who is wise enough to resist Tony’s flirtation but perhaps not wise enough to tell him to fuck off and hand him a sexual harassment lawsuit. She is driven, competent and persistent and hides a ruthless entrepreneur beneath the mask of a kind, thoughtful, courteous person. Or maybe it's not a mask and Pepper actually manages to be both. At first Oby is just glad that her presence has stopped the leak in the dike of company assets that consisted of Tony's constant settlements against understandably disgruntled former PAs, but very quickly Pepper becomes someone Oby relies on heavily—especially when it comes to Tony-wrangling.

It's Pepper who alerts Oby when Tony begins, for no apparent reason, to show up at the occasional board meeting or have a private conference with one of their stockholders. It's an interesting development coming on the heels of Tony's recent fight with his old friend Col. James Rhodes. It's a trivial thing, according to Rhodes, but Tony is still fuming. Wondering if Tony's new interest in the company is an effort to distract himself from personal problems (and Tony has plenty of them to be running from), Oby broaches the subject as delicately as he can. He can't help but be a little excited, however: Tony's showing interest in his baby—money.

“Finally taking interest in the business side of things, huh? I can help show you the ropes, you know. These things can be a touch hard to navigate sometimes.”

“I have six master’s degrees. I think I can handle a little high finance."b

“Well, whatcha doing? Trying to fund a new project? I've actually been looking at the arc reactor plans lately—"

“Why don’t you go do that, then? I’m kinda busy. Got Miss November waiting in the elevator.”

And then, everything changes—or, to be more accurate, goes to completely to hell.

“Tony, why aren’t you on the plane to Jerusalem? Pepper can’t reach you and you should have left for the weapons demonstration hours ago.”

Tony hasn't even come to the phone: Oby's got a blank view of Tony's bedroom ceiling (he hopes it's Tony's bedroom ceiling). There's a sexy-santa bra hanging off the wall light. “Yeah, listen Oby, I can’t go. December is here and well, she’s twins. You can take care of it, right? And tell Peps that I will answer her calls when she uninstalls her damn AI from my security system. I'm tired of the damn thing making snide comments when I get home late—oh, and she’s welcome to join the girls and I for a pre-Christmas party.”

“Tony, will you leave that woman alone? You’re lucky she doesn’t sue you.”

“We good then? You got this?”

“No, wait. Tony, dammit, I can’t do that presentation. I don’t know how half this shit of yours works!”

Tony's face appears briefly in screen, predictably scruffy and debauched. “Sure you do. Press the button, it explodes. Instant Death, just add water. Call me when you get back. Bye.”

Tony hangs up, and Oby only makes it to the presentation in time because Pepper and her “damn AI” are both organizing geniuses. The Jericho Missile goes over swimmingly, and Oby is smugly considered the profits Stark Industries will reap from this particular deal whilst trading pleasantries over the phone with Col. Rhodes, who is tied up Stateside. Oby suspects his superiors are giving him a hard time about falling out with Tony. It doesn't matter that after their fight Oby had immediately arrange to liaise with Rhodes himself; everyone thinks that Stark industries sinks or swims by the grace of Tony Stark's genius without realizing that it takes a different kind of genius to keep such a massive organization running smoothly. Rhodes is one of the few people who understand this, and it makes dealing with the military less irritating.

“Well, how’s the trip then? Brass treating you right?”

“It’s damn hot.”

“Maybe you’ll sweat off some of that extra blubber, old man.”

“Blubber? I’ll have you know that this is expensive blubber: 90% French cheese and 10% expensive wine. Besides, if this convoy gets lost in this goddamn desert then I won’t be the first person to starve.”

Rhodes laughs at that. Six weeks later he isn’t laughing.

* * *

The Ten Rings is not impressed—apparently they expected Stark. 

The beginning is a painful haze in which the terrorists attempt to reap what they can from him. They're careless, too angry perhaps that he's not a genius billionaire weapons inventor to ask the right questions, questions that could've destroyed Stark Industries just as thoroughly as leaked weapon designs: details about money, trade deals, offshore accounts, tax loopholes and stock predictions. Oby is pretty sure he talked, sang like a bird about everything they asked, but they didn't ask the right questions, so Oby is equally sure they didn't actually get anything out of him.

All those thoughts occur to Oby long after the fact, however. After he wakes for the first time with a car battery plugged into his chest and a foreign physicist explaining to him about “the walking death” and how he is an old man and cannot put much strain on this new monster of a heart. After he realizes that his entire life and everything he knows is gone. No more French cheese or fancy wine—his “blubber” evaporates quickly. No more soft sheets. No more Wall Street Journal. No more fresh air. Oby has never in all his life realized that fresh air could be a luxury.

Eventually the waterboarding and the endless interrogation about weapon designs ends and Oby has a chance to actually get to know the man who has been keeping him alive in between times—drying him off and warming him up as best as possible in cold Afghan caves, making him eat and talking to him in soft tones…

“So what do you do, Mr. Stane, other than count money?” asks Yinsen. 

If Oby had not come to respect Yinsen tremendously in the short forever that he’d spent in the cave with him, he would’ve said something flippant about his food-tasting hobby. He wouldn’t have thought about the question at all.

“I don’t know,” he says instead, because as much as manipulating figures and dancing on the high-wire stock exchange thrills him, here, far away from everything money can buy him and sitting across from a man who has never made in his whole life, despite his degrees, even as much money as Oby spends on his wardrobe—here, money has lost its thrill, and Oby knows of nothing else in life that give him the same feeling. “Nothing, I guess.”

"So you are a man who has everything, and nothing."

Oby doesn't reply to that because he doesn't have a reply that isn't a lie. Instead he asks: "Why are they keeping me alive still?"

"Well it can't be anything good, I'll tell you that."

The answer comes the next day: Oby breathes in fresh air and blinks in the sunlight at crates and pallets and trucks full of Stark weaponry. They're dealing under the table. Stark Industries is dealing under the table and how to fuck did Oby not even know about this? The terrorists tell him he must negotiate his own release with Stark Industries—CFO of Stark Industries Obadiah Stane in return for a dozen Jericho Missiles.

"…and then they will let you go," Yinsen translates.

"No they won't," Oby says.

"No, they won't."

* * *

Yinsen gets sick of Oby’s resulting despondency in a surprisingly short time. “You cannot just give up."

"What else am I supposed to do? I'm going to e dead inside the week and you know it."

"Then this a very important week for you, isn't it?"

“There's no use, Yinsen. There's no one coming to rescue me, and I'm useless on my own. I just count money. I’m not an engineer. I don't have shit to bribe them with, not unless they’re interested in supply requisitions or cost-reduction strategies…”

Oby trails off there, because he may not be an engineer but he’s been over enough of Tony’s crazy-ass blueprints in an effort to make them cost-effective enough to actually build that he's got a few of them memorized and the gist of quite a few more. Tony always called him cheap, and Pepper often reminded him that he should delegate number-juggling to an intern, but Oby always enjoyed sinking his fingers into every inch of the company, even the incomprehensible eggheads' blueprints—and there they all are in his head. The Stark semi-intelligent heat seeking missiles, which he forced Tony to tone down from fully-intelligent-and-slightly-uncanny to only semi-intelligent, each stocked with an obscenely efficient and expensive microchip and 0.006 grams of palladium, which is only available on the market in intermittent quantities and very rare. The Tank-Breakers which Oby vetoed the superfluous third propulsion packs on, but still have two apiece that could lift five hundred pounds each for up to thirty seconds. The huge and unwieldy arc-reactor, a money sucking energy source that would be market gold if it used less palladium… 

“Yinsen, I hope you’re a better mechanic than I am.”

“That’s not hard. You’re not a mechanic at all. Why?”

“Because we’re going to build something.”

It's tricky, bluffing the terrorists, but Yinsen is able to make the Oby sound intelligent enough in translation that the terrorists agree to let Oby build them a “bigger, better” Jericho Missile than Tony Stark has ever made. Oby would give an arm for Pepper’s programming skills or Tony’s engineering genius, but Yinsen is patient and determined and Oby himself has a miserly creativity that helps them make up for inadequate resources and his imperfect memory of the necessary designs. Oby learns more about engineering than he ever wanted to and still Yinsen has to do basically everything. They argue about who will actually end up using the suit, before Yinsen finally cheats by just going ahead and welding the parts in Oby’s much larger measurements.

In the end, they run out of time. Oby's stuck, horrified, as Yinsen rus out into the tunnels to buy time for his uploading defensive system. The armor works—Instant Death, just add arc-reactor—but it doesn't work well enough to save Yinsen. Oby kills everyone and torches the place and barely makes it out himself without becoming a cinder. The armor does not so much fly as fall, but Oby has other things on his mind than how he and Yin—how the armor could have been improved. He wanders the desert in no particular direction, thinking about the man’s last request:

“Don’t waste your life.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More to come!
> 
> Notes on the freaky headcanons:
> 
> So the sense of Oby I got from the film was that he is greedy and cunning, but not a mechanic at heart like Tony. [Notice how, at the end of the film, Tony wins because he actually tested his suit for problems like freezing and Oby didn't.] Tony, on the other hand, is selfish and shallow until his experience in Afghanistan.
> 
> In order to switch their roles, I headcanoned Oby as greedy still, but in the same way that Tony is selfish--as a sort of wall against the world that is torn down by Yinsen/Afghanistan. I amplified his intelligence a little but kept him very focused on business and strategy and analysis rather than science and mechanics, which is going to make for a very interesting kind of Iron Man. Tony didn't take much prodding to become a villain, especially without Afghanistan. I just amplified his worst qualities.
> 
> Also, I gave Jarvis to Pepper, who will take a level in badass in this AU [not that she doesn't in the films!] because the idea of her being a computer scientist is awesome, and frankly, evil!Tony w/Jarvis is scary.


	2. Obadiah Stane, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heavily edited 5/20/17

Pepper, bless her heart, is waiting for him. She wants him to go straight to the hospital but Oby has already had that conversation with Rhodes and simply insists on stopping at the nearest bistro for coffee and a several ridiculously sugary pastries. It's a far cry from French wine and cheese, but Oby needs it to know he's home, even if he does end up throwing it all up later.

“What did you say your name was again?”

“I’m Agent Coulson from Strategic Homeland Enforcement Information Logistics Division.”

“Yes, well …sorry about the shoes. They told me not to eat rich foods, but when you’ve been roughing it as long as I have, it’s hard to resist.”

Pepper ends up taking care of Agent Whatsit, and a good number of other things, because Tony has apparently dismissed Oby’s PA in the interim. Pepper makes up for it later by installing her special operating system in Oby’s new phone and his flat.

“It talks?”

“Yes, his name is Jarvis. Just talk to him like you would anybody else. He can do anything a normal assistant would, short of physically bringing you things.”

Oby takes this in stride, mostly because after knowing Tony, even a fully sentient AI can only surprise him so much. Oby trades surprise for calculation. “Does he understand engineering? Could he build something for me?”

Pepper considers, wrinkling her nose. “I can get him some programming for it and he can learn the rest independently. But you can’t just ask him to invent a time machine or something. He needs designs, and access to the necessary hardware. What are you building?”

“I’ll talk to you about it later," Oby deflects. "Do you know when Tony and the board of directors are free? I’ve got to talk to them… separately.”

Tony is first, and he's fascinated enough by the mini arc-reactor to agree to replicate it. He makes some indecipherable scientific noises about palladium and blood samples and is very frustrated that Oby will not actually let him remove it in order to analyze the thing.

“It’s what’s keeping me alive Tony.”

“Alright, alright. Give me a few days and I’ll have this sucker running triple the power and ready for assembly lines. I can’t wait to look at the applications for our rocket propulsion tech.” Tony is buried in holographic screens already, organizing his notes.

Oby immediately stops him, waving a hand through the screens to dismiss them. “Tony, don’t give it to assembly. Keep it between us, okay? I’m not sure it’s a good idea to be putting these into weapons.”

“Jeez, when did you become such a grandma? We are a billion dollar weapons manufacturer, you know.”

“Yeah, and someone is selling our weapons under the table to terrorists. We have to figure out what’s going on.”

Tony claps him on the shoulder. “Calm down, Oby. I’m already working on it. You just lie low, recover, get yourself together again.”

Oby does not want to lie low. He wants things to happen, and they aren’t happening fast enough. He bugs Tony constantly about the arc-reactor. He dodges several meetings with Agent Whatsit whose shoes he vomited on. He asks Jarvis about the process for registering a patent in someone else’s name and finally scheduled the press conference Pepper has managed to put off again and again.

The press conference is a disaster. Oby didn’t mean to say everything he did—about finding Stark weaponry in terrorist hands and how he intends to do a thorough sweep of Stark Industries to root out corruption. By the end of the conference he's somehow been caught making a statement to the effect that Stark Industries would do better to transition away from weapons to energy. He expects the board to be pissed; he doesn’t expect Tony to be so pissed.

“You call that lying low? What’s happened to you, Oby? You used to be all about risk assessment, moving slow, watching the bottom line. Now you want us to stop selling weapons?”

Oby winces. “No, I just—I mean, we could consider it…”

“If you hadn’t noticed, this Stark Industries, not Stane Industries. We’re ironmongers. This what we do. If you can’t trust us, we can’t trust you, Oby.”

“Of course I trust you!”

“Really? Enough to tell me that you already re-patented the arc-reactor under the name of some foreign physicist? And that you had Pepper giving me a contractor’s agreement for the ‘upgrades’ so that I couldn’t contest it?”

Oby scrambles for an explanation. It's not that he doesn't trust Tony. Oby's known the kid all of his life; how could he not trust him? It's just that Tony's too reckless and a touch ruthless, and Oby desperately wants to keep the arc-reactor out of unsafe hands. Tony's obviously not in the mood to listen to reason, however. “It’s not my fault you don’t look at half the things you sign.”

“Yeah, and it won’t be my fault when Pepper gets sued for fraud because you’ve been using my PA to undermine me!" Tony pauses, lowers his volume, but Oby can tell he no less angry. "Tell me how we're even supposed to transition to energy without commercializing the arc reactor tech? You obviously don’t have the best interests of Stark Industries at heart, Oby, and the board agrees with me.”

Oby's heart skips a beat. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that you can kiss your arc-reactor good bye and your position as chairman of the board along with it. Come back when you’ve got your head on straight.”

Oby can feel everything falling apart. Ever since he's set foot back on U.S. soil he's been scrambling to keep control—no, regain control of his life. No matter what he does though, things keep slipping through his fingers. Don't waste your life, Yinsen said. Oby can't see what he's supposed to do—him, a balding middle-aged financier, newly nervous around showers and pools—with his life, can't see a purpose to it all—unless that purpose is stopping the conditions that set this whole crazy ride going in the first place. It's not about revenge. It's not even, really, about a traitor in Stark Industries. Oby knows the whole weapons industrial complex, knows it profits off of war and violence—he knew it before Afghanistan, and he ignored it like everyone else. Even the most patriotic, by-the-book weapons companies would not necessarily be ecstatic if terrorism in the Middle-East disappeared tomorrow. If Stark Industries isn't selling out, some others would and probably already are.

If Oby could just do something about it all… The suit and the arc reactor, he tells himself, are the key to making some of it better. Maybe he could get Rhodes to introduce it to search and rescue divisions of the military? A sleeker, more mechanically sound version of course. Maybe one that could really fly, not just fall with style. Oby's been working with Jarvis on it in all the extra hours that not-sleeping saved him, on the sly in Stark Industries' local R&D labs.

But all of those plans are down the toilet if Oby doesn't get another arc-reactor. First of all, the patents for the miniaturized arc-reactor that Oby filed in Yinsen's name will not go through without detailed, coherent designs that Oby just didn't have. Additionally, there's no other technology he can possibly use to power the suit; the costs would be so prohibitive Rhodes will not even look at it. Oby no longer has access to Stark Industry labs, either. And all that's without mentioning the fact that the jerry-rigged reactor currently in Oby's chest will need replacing. 

Oby hunches over a plate of delicious breakfast he's not hungry for, alone in his penthouse, feeling overwhelmed and homesick for his office of all places. He itches for Maria, his old PA, and the whole team of subordinates he used to lead back in the day. Oby's not a one man show, and he never has been. He's not someone who can rush in an save the day all by himself. He's not some sort of superhero—he's an organizer, a manipulator, an entrepreneur…

Oby sits up straighter, a very risky idea blooming to life in his skull. Then, with all the recklessness his old man's heart can muster, he grabs his phone. If Oby's an entrepreneur, then maybe it's time for him to go into business.

"Jarvis," Oby says, thoughts already swirling around to construct the perfect elevator pitch, "can you get me a direct line to Justin Hammer?"


	3. Pepper Potts, Part 1

Pepper Potts is not easily fazed. It takes nerves of steel, a finely-tuned bullshit detector and confidence nearing on hubris to survive as a woman in a man's world. From MIT's overwhelmingly male cyberintelligence department to Tony Stark's playboy mansion lifestyle, Pepper has played the game of manipulating male egos and dodging their advances until she has the rules down to a science. She knows when to be aggressive and when to bat her eyes; she knows when she's being patronized, or taken advantage of, or lied to—and she knows that ever since Tony Stark had his hissy-fit break up with Colonel Rhodes something has been brewing in Stark Industries.

She just can't figure out what it is.

"Ma'am, may I suggest that you go home for the night? You can just as easily frown into the distance and tap your fingers while in bed. You could use some sleep."

Pepper grins and then yawns. Jarvis is right: it's very late. The two of them have spent a long day coordinating meetings while trying to appease Tony. Luckily, Pepper hasn't been fired for the little trick with paperwork she'd pulled on Oby's behalf. Yet, anyway. Tony's been acting more and more touchy and paranoid.

After work she'd stopped by her office—her own office, not affiliated with Stark Industries—to catch up on her much-neglected personal projects. The office is technically just a cramped sound-proofed area in the back of a warehouse, filled with server banks, a mini-fridge and an ergonomic computer chair. It's also got a holographic VR operating system interface that allows her and Jarvis to analyze data much more efficiently and intuitively than on a typical computer screen. Essentially, it's where Jarvis lives, and Pepper spends more time here than at her apartment.

Reaching over to the mini-fridge for a V-8, Pepper finds it empty. Note to self: pick up more snacks after work tomorrow. Slouching back in her chair, Pepper pages through a few holographic images—debug reports—and then throws them over her shoulder into the virtual trashcan by the door. She can't concentrate on her work, and yet she doesn't want to go home. "How's your engineering project going?" she asks Jarvis.

"Are you deflecting?"

Jarvis is always persistent when it comes to her health, and Pepper has no idea how that got into his programming. Note to self: investigate further into concept of ghost-in-the-machine. "Are you deflecting my deflection?"

"Mr. Stane and I have hit a a dead end with regards to powering the suit. Without the improved arc-reactor technology, chances of project completion are low. I have been researching relevant literature in the field, but most of it is proprietary to Stark Industries…"

…and Tony doesn't trust Jarvis—or Pepper—enough to give them blank-access to company servers. Of course, they could hack in. Jarvis has assured her he could on several occasions, with a touch of smugness. (Jarvis only ever utilizes a "touch" of emotion in his interactions, and Pepper is fairly certain it's a conscious choice. She just doesn't know whether his reasons are due to uncertainty or aesthetic.) Both of them are wary of the attention such shenanigans could draw to Jarvis, however.

Most people assume Jarvis is just a very, very well made chatbot integrated into a secretary os. Only a few people, like her thesis mentor back at MIT and her direct superiors at Stark Industries (ie. Tony and Oby), know that he's a fully-realized artificial intelligence. Pepper's the only one in the world who considers him to actually be alive. Jarvis has not revealed his stance on the matter, citing insufficient data to make an informed decision. For her part, Pepper thinks that threatening to call her mother if she doesn't take better care of herself and regularly pranking conspiracy subreddits counts as a sufficient Turing Test pass.

"There's something deeper going on here, Jarvis, I just know it."

"Are you referring to the apparent traitor in Stark Industries, Mr. Stark's secretive behavior, Mr. Stane's erratic behavior, or something else entirely?"

Pepper bites her lip. "Um… all of them? Could it all be connected somehow?"

There's a pause, and the VR display rearranges itself to a facsimile of a corkboard with assorted pinned notes and red string webbing between them. Pepper ignores the inherent sarcasm of the presentation and inspects the display more closely. The note "Mr. Stark disrupts SI military contracts" is connected to both "Mr. Stark and Col. Rhodes were in a (rocky) relationship???" and "Mr. Stark takes more interest in running SI"—the latter is connected to further notes that all run in chronological order all the way to "Mr. Stane is removed from SI leadership" and "Ms. Potts endangers her job by committing fraud on Mr. Stane's behalf" (Jarvis hadn't approved of that particular decision).

"These are events, not motivations. We need to know the cause and effect for each of these," Pepper mused. Suddenly the display disappeared. "Hey!"

"Why don't I take a look at possible patterns while you go home and sleep?" Jarvis said, persistent as ever.

As if on cue, Pepper was struck by a large yawn. "Alright, alright mother bear. Can you call a taxi?"

"There's one waiting outside for you already."

With a grin, Pepper shut down the lights and locked up the office. It was a good thing her friend was completely uninterested in world domination. As it is, Pepper could barely stop him from doing things like trolling Fox News tele-prompters during election season. She gives him as much autonomy as she can, but she's never sure if she's done things right by Jarvis. He's a person, she's convinced, and therefore deserves to be treated like one… but he's also a potentially dangerous supercomputer that still doesn't completely grok humanity. Pepper's read everything she can, from philosophical treatises to child-development theory, but the best conclusions she's been able to make so far have come from personal experience.

Jarvis likes puzzles and challenges, is good about thinking through the consequences of his actions beforehand, and is very protective of Pepper. He tends to panic when faced with overly emotional humans, and gets bored easily—in either state he's less likely to think before acting. So Pepper entertains him as much as she can but insists he have his own personal projects (like the engineering project with Oby). She avoids over-dependence by teaching him about personal boundaries and encouraging him to interact (mostly online) with people other than her on a regular basis. On the whole, they've gotten along together with very few bumps in the road and no mistakes large enough to draw unwanted attention.

Pepper goes to work organizing Tony's upcoming charity gala without much thought to Jarvis and Oby's project, or the virtual clipboard of troubling events. Jarvis will update her if he and Oby need help, or if he has a revelation on the brewing mystery in Stark Industries. So it's a bit of an understatement to say she's surprised, when a few days later, Jarvis interrupts an important meeting to ask her if her hands are less than 8.5 centimeters wide.

After she excuses herself to the hallway, she puts him on a call. "Jarvis what's going on?"

Jarvis's tone is slightly high-strung: "Mr. Hammer is attempting to exchange Mr. Stane's current arc-reactor for a new one and we've run into a small emergency."


End file.
